Reversible Sorbent for Warm CO2 Capture by Pressure Swing Adsorption

ABSTRACT

Sorbent for reversible warm CO 2  capture. The sorbent includes activated carbon impregnated with magnesium oxide, wherein the magnesium oxide constitutes at least 5% by weight of the sorbent.

This application claims priority to provisional application Ser. No. 61/718807 filed Oct. 26, 2012, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to CO₂ capture and more particularly to a sorbent capable of capturing CO₂ at warm temperatures.

There is a growing consensus that global warming is caused by anthropogenic CO₂ emission¹. Among all sources, a coal-fired power plant represents the largest point source for CO₂ emission². But at the same time, coal is the most inexpensive and most abundant fossil fuel³. Thus, in the near future, although renewable energy and nuclear energy will play increasing roles, coal will remain a major component of the energy portfolio, especially in developing counties³. Facing this dilemma, technologies are needed to utilize coal with higher energy efficient and lower CO₂ emission. Currently, integrated gasification combined cycle with carbon capture and sequestration (IGCC with CCS) is one of the most promising candidates for achieving this goal⁴. IGCC has two important features compared with a traditional pulverized coal (PC) plant⁵. First, because of the combined cycle, IGCC can achieve higher energy efficiency. Second, the gas stream has higher pressure which facilitates the capture of sulfur, mercury, nitride oxide, particulate and CO₂, making emission control less expensive.

Currently, the state-of-the-art CO₂ capture process for IGCC is scrubbing the gas stream with physical or chemical solvents, such as MEA, Rectisol or Selexol. These solvent-based absorption processes need to operate at fairly low temperature. Thus, the gas stream coming from a water gas shift reactor must be significantly cooled down, which leads to high energy loss and high capital costs both for the compressors used for cooling and for heat recuperation. A study carried out by DOE/NETL^(5,6), which assumed Selexol for carbon capture, indicated a reduction in net power output and a corresponding reduction in HHV thermal efficiency of 6%-9% as compared to a base case of IGCC with no carbon capture. It would be very desirable to reduce the parasitic energy load and operating costs associated with the traditional low-temperature CO₂ capture process. Prior studies have assessed high temperature CO₂ separation processes^(7,8), such as H₂-permeable membranes^(9,10), CO₂-permeable membrane¹¹, and pressure swing adsorption (PSA)¹², and identified opportunities to significantly improve the efficiency. A more recent study¹³ in our group extended previous analyses to compare a variety of novel separation methods for IGCC with CCS, namely sorbents and membranes, on a unified basis. Our computational approach identified pressure swing adsorption operated at warm gas temperatures (200-300° C.) could be potentially more efficient compared with other approaches. However, no sorbent was yet reported to be applicable in this temperature range.

Widely used in the oil and chemical industry, pressure swing adsorption²⁰ (PSA) of gases onto solid sorbents provides some key advantages, such as low energy requirements, low costs, and ease of applicability. In spite of these advantages, there have only been a few studies related to regenerable sorbents of CO₂ at 200-300° C. in the literature. To be applicable to a PSA process in the desired temperature range, the sorbent needs to maintain a regenerable sorbent capacity, fast kinetics, and low heat of adsorption. The commercially available sorbents such as activated carbon, zeolites, and alumina lose their adsorption properties at temperatures higher than 150° C. Super activated carbon²¹ can maintain sufficient capacity at temperatures as high as 220° C., but the CO₂/N₂ selectivity is low. Basic zeolites^(22,23) obtained by doping with electropositive ions were also tested for this purpose, but showed poor performance in the presence of other polar gases such as SO₂ and steam.

Some inorganic materials have also been proposed in the literature for carbon capture at an elevated temperature, such as calcium oxide^(24,25), lithium zirconate²⁶, lithium silicate^(27,28), sodium-based sorbent²⁹, hydrotalcite-like compounds (HTIs)^(30,31) and double salt sorbent³². Calcium oxide demonstrated high capacity even at 700° C., but suffered from poor regenerability, slow kinetics and an extremely large heat requirement. Lithium-based materials can capture CO₂ in the 450-550° C. range, but suffer from slow sorption kinetics. Sodium-based materials showed good adsorption in the 200-400° C. range, but the materials can only be regenerated at 700° C., and so are not suitable for pressure swing adsorption. Double salt sorbent shows extremely high capacity at high temperature, but it is very hard to produce reproducible samples³³. Recently, DOE/NETL reported a magnesium hydroxide based sorbent¹⁹, which has a large capacity in the 200-300° C. range, and can be regenerated at 375° C. But the regeneration via thermal treatment is still not desirable for our purpose. In addition, the breakthrough curve of this sorbent indicates slow sorption kinetics which could arise from the very low surface area of the sorbent. Among such inorganic materials, HTIs stand out as the most promising candidate for warm CO₂ capture, and they have been widely studied for sorption-enhanced water gas shifter reaction^(34,35). Hydrotalcite-like compounds consist of positively-charged brucite (MgOH)-like layers balanced by hydrated anions. The most common type is Mg—Al—CO₃, in which stacked layers of magnesium hydroxide [Mg(OH)₂] in which some of the divalent cations (Mg²⁺) are substituted by trivalent cations (Al³⁺) at the centers of octahedral sites of the hydroxide sheets. HTIs are often promoted with K₂CO₃ to improve their performance in the presence of high pressure steam. These two classes of materials after calcination have been widely studied for CO₂ capture at high temperatures (350-500° C.)

This patent application has as an object to develop a new sorbent for CO₂ with good regenerability, fast kinetics and low heat of adsorption that can be applied in a PSA process in a warm temperature range. The material prepared through incipient wetness impregnation has a large surface area and pore size which facilitates the rapid adsorption of CO₂. Through the detailed study of sorbent capacity, multi-cycle regenerability, sorption rate and comparisons with HTIs, we demonstrate here that the sorbent disclosed herein is a candidate for warm CO₂ capture by the PSA process.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to the invention, a sorbent for reversible warm CO₂ capture includes a high surface area support material impregnated with MgO, wherein the MgO constitutes at least 5% by weight of the sorbent. A preferred high surface area support material is activated carbon. In a preferred embodiment, MgO constitutes approximately 15% by weight. MgO in the range of 5-15% is suitable for uses at the invention. It is preferred that the sorbent material disclosed herein be made using an incipient wetness impregnation method. In a preferred embodiment, a magnesium precursor is a soluble magnesium salt such as magnesium nitrate.

The sorbent disclosed herein has good regenerability, fast kinetics, and low heat of adsorption that can be applied in a pressure swing adsorption process at a warm temperature range.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

FIG. 1 is a thermogravimetric diagram of the formation of the sorbent disclosed herein from a precursor material.

FIG. 2 is a graph showing the pore size distribution of an embodiment of the support and sorbent disclosed herein.

FIG. 3 is a graph of quantity adsorbed as a function of relative pressure for N₂ sorption-desorption tests.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a high pressure microbalance system.

FIG. 5 is a graph of capacity versus pressure showing reversible adsorption isotherms at various temperatures.

FIG. 6 is a graph of differential heat of adsorption against capacity showing that heat of adsorption has a weak dependence on loading.

FIG. 7 is a graph of capacity against cycle number for sorbent at 200° C.

FIG. 8 is a thermogravimetric diagram of the sorbent disclosed herein when exposed to one atmosphere CO₂ at different temperatures.

FIG. 9 is a graph of sorption rate against time at different temperatures when exposed to one atmosphere CO₂.

FIG. 10 is a graph of capacity against cycle number providing cyclic working capacity comparisons of the sorbent disclosed herein versus HTLs.

FIG. 11 is a graph of normalized capacity against time showing sorption rate comparisons.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The sorbent material of the invention was synthesized using the incipient wetness impregnation method, which has been widely adopted for preparing heterogeneous catalysts. Those of skill in the art will recognize that other methods for depositing MgO on the support may be used including co-precipitation, sol gel method, electrolytic processing, and chemical vapor deposition. An MgO/carbon sorbent can be made in one step using MgCl₂ as a chemical activation reagent for activated carbon production. This process makes the production cost very low, which is a key factor when choosing a sorbent. To achieve the best performance, different magnesium precursors (nitrate, citrate, acetate, oxalate) were tested and compared. Nitrate was finally chosen as the precursor. Several preparation conditions, such as precursor concentration, support materials, calcination temperature and time were also studied to determine the optimal preparation procedure. The finalized impregnation procedure is as follows: 3.8 M solution of Mg(NO₃)₂ (from Sigma Aldrich) was added dropwise to preheated activated carbon (DARCO®, from Sigma Aldrich), to reach the desired MgO loading (15% by weight in a preferred embodiment). The as-prepared material was first dried for 12 h in open air, and was further dried in an oven at 100° C. for another 12 h. The material was finally calcined in a muffle furnace at 500° C. for 3 h under pure nitrogen.

It is recognized that other high surface area supports beyond activated carbon may be used in the present invention including Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOF), zeolites, activated alumina and mesoporous silica. Some of these support materials might require modification of the impregnation method such as, for example, to use a nonaqueous solvent rather than water.

The formation of the sorbent from the supported magnesium precursor was characterized by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in a thermogravimetric analyzer (Q500 TGA, TA Instruments). The typical thermogravimetric profile of the material is shown in FIG. 1. The material showed three decomposition steps leading to the corresponding sorbent. A first region showed water loss with a broad peak from 350 K-450 K. Most of the loosely held water in the precursor was lost before the materials reached 463 K. The second region (450 K-700 K) showed an intense endothermic peak which corresponds to decomposition of magnesium nitrate to magnesium oxide. The third region (700 K-900 K) has no observable peak, and the small weight change might arise from the weight loss of the carbon support. A temperature of 750 K was finally chosen as the calcination temperature, as this would ensure the minimum sintering and complete decomposition of magnesium nitrate.

The surface area and pore size distribution of the sorbent were determined by N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherms at 77 K on a Micromeritics ASAP 2020 instrument. The surface areas and average pore diameters (Dp) were calculated using the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. The pore size distributions and pore volumes (Vp), between 170 and 300 nm, were determined from the desorption branch using the Barrett-Joyner-Halenda (BJH) method. See FIG. 2.

As shown in FIG. 3, both of the materials show characteristic hysteresis loops of the type IV isotherm¹⁴, which is associated with capillary condensation taking place in mesopores. This type of isotherm is very common in mesoporous industrial adsorbents.

Analysis of the hysteresis loops indicates that samples synthesized by incipient wetness impregnation did not exhibit any limiting adsorption at high relative pressure, which is characteristic of type H3 hysteresis loops, corresponding to aggregates of plate-like particles giving rise to slip-shaped pores¹⁴. In general, the porous structure patterns measured by BET were maintained after the impregnation and the subsequent thermal treatment despite the observed decreases in surface area.

The morphological properties of the support and sorbent are summarized in Table 1. As expected, heat treatment of the samples reduced their specific surface areas and mesopores volumes. But the average pore diameter does not change significantly. These values ensure that the pore size is not limiting with respect to the subsequent CO₂ adsorption studies. The total volume was contributed mostly from mesoporosity volume.

TABLE 1 Summary of morphological data for the support and sorbent BET Total surface area pore volume V_2 nm-300 nm (m2/g) (cm3/g) (cm3/g) Dp (nm) Support 978 0.82 0.55 6.84 Sorbent 532 0.48 0.34 6.93

The measurements of sorption capacity and cyclic stability of the sorbent were performed in a high pressure microbalance shown in FIG. 4 (D110, from THASS company, Germany) and a TGA analyzer (Q500 TGA, TA instruments). A buoyancy correction has been considered.

The combined isotherm containing reversible and irreversible components was first determined, and the sample was then evacuated to remove only the reversibly adsorbed CO₂. The adsorption isotherm, was then measured again, yielding the reversible adsorption only. The irreversible adsorption was determined by the difference between the total isotherms and reversible isotherm at different pressure points. The capacity for reversible and irreversible adsorption at different temperatures are summarized in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Capacity at different temperature and pressure (mmol CO₂/g Sorbent) Pressure T = 180° C. T = 200° C. T = 220° C. T = 240° C. (atm) Reversible Irreversible Reversible Irreversible Reversible Irreversible Reversible Irreversible 3 0.6416 0.2386 0.5595 0.2064 0.4775 0.2235 0.4438 0.1648 4 0.7803 0.2481 0.7004 0.2159 0.5909 0.2159 0.5615 0.1761 5 0.9002 0.2689 0.8097 0.2386 0.6876 0.2311 0.6518 0.1913 6 0.9969 0.3011 0.9211 0.2424 0.7780 0.2462 0.7296 0.2121 7 1.1189 0.3011 1.0347 0.2557 0.8769 0.2576 0.8306 0.2178 8 1.2410 0.3068 1.1442 0.2633 0.9779 0.2765 0.9232 0.2292 9 1.3273 0.3106 1.2200 0.2803 1.0579 0.2803 0.9927 0.2311 10 1.4200 0.3220 1.3106 0.2898 1.1442 0.2917 1.0707 0.2462 11 1.4959 0.3371 1.3864 0.3011 1.1992 0.3049 1.1318 0.2443 12 1.5697 0.3428 1.4645 0.3106 1.2835 0.2992 1.2141 0.2443 13 1.6436 0.3485 1.5342 0.3106 1.3490 0.3049 1.2816 0.2557 14 1.7028 0.3655 1.6081 0.3163 1.4082 0.3144 1.3555 0.2424 15 1.7788 0.3598 1.6652 0.3295 1.4800 0.3125 1.4232 0.2405 16 1.8865 0.3580 1.7813 0.3163 1.5793 0.3163 1.5056 0.2462

Concerning the effect of temperature, it was observed that the capacity of the adsorption decreases as the temperature increases, because high temperature shifts the adsorption reaction equilibrium. The reversible adsorption capacity shows a strong dependence on the partial pressure of CO₂, and the trend can be fitted to a Langmuir model with good precision. The irreversible adsorption capacity reaches a relatively high value even at a low pressure, and the pressure increase does not significantly increase the irreversible adsorption capacity. The irreversible adsorption sites get saturated even at lower pressure, suggesting the irreversible adsorption arises from a strong chemical reaction, which is sharply different from the reaction mode contributing to the reversible adsorption.

For a practical pressure swing absorption sorbent, we care only about the reversible adsorption, because only reversible components would contribute in a real application. A reversible adsorption isotherm at four different temperatures was measured in the high pressure microbalance, and the measurement has been corrected by considering buoyancy effects.

$\begin{matrix} {n_{i}^{0} = \frac{a\; {\exp \left( {b/T} \right)}P}{1 + {c\; {\exp \left( {d/T} \right)}P}}} & {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 1} \end{matrix}$

A temperature-dependent Langumuir model (Equation 1) was adopted to fit the isotherm data. As shown in FIG. 5, the model captures the shape and temperature-dependent behavior.

The heat of adsorption is rigorously derived in the literature¹⁵⁻¹⁷ as shown in Equation 2, where n₁ ⁰ is the capacity. Once a temperature-dependent equilibrium isotherm is established, the heat of adsorption can be theoretically derived from an isotherm model based on Equation 3. The heat of adsorption for this sorbent is shown in FIG. 6, which is consistent with reported data¹⁸. The value is very close to the enthalpy of reaction between magnesium hydroxide and CO₂ ¹⁹ which is consistent with the analysis concerning the correlation between reaction mode and reversibility¹⁸.

$\begin{matrix} {q_{i}^{0} = {R\; {T^{2}\left\lbrack \frac{{\partial\ln}\; P}{\partial T} \right\rbrack}_{n_{i}^{0}}}} & {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 2} \\ {q_{i}^{0} = {{- {R\left( \frac{\partial n_{i}^{0}}{\partial\left( {1/T} \right)} \right)}_{P}}/\left( \frac{\partial n_{i}^{0}}{{\partial\ln}\; P} \right)_{T}}} & {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 3} \end{matrix}$

As stressed above, to be applicable at the pressure swing adsorption process, regenerability is an important property. To study the adsorption reversibility, an 84-cycle test was performed in a high pressure microbalance. The temperature was maintained at 200° C. the sorption step was at 13 atm and the desorption was at 1 atm.

It was observed (FIG. 7) that the capacity at the 1st cycle is large, which is attributed to the combination of reversible and irreversible adsorption. The capacity decreases dramatically after the first cycle. Roughly 30% of the capacity cannot be regenerated using pressure change only as discussed above. The sorbent can only be completely regenerated at high temperature (723 K).

After the first cycle, the sorbent can maintain a capacity of roughly 1.4 mmol/g. According to the study¹⁸, the irreversibility arises from the formation of unidentate carbonates. The decrease of surface area could also contribute to the capacity reduction.

The sorbent capacity is lower than that of the commonly reported activated carbon and zeolites. But note that those sorbents are working at much lower temperature, and at low temperature, multilayer adsorption contributes to the high capacity. These multilayer sorbents do not work in our desired temperature range. On the other hand, calcium oxide and lithium based materials have a very large capacity at high temperature, but in those cases, the sorption is based on bulk reaction. The drawback or that sorption mode is the extremely slow kinetics associated with bulk reaction and species diffusion in a solid. The novel sorbent disclosed herein apparently captures CO₂ based on purely a surface reaction. One can treat it as a pseudo-single layer adsorption. Considering the surface area of the sorbent, the capacity data is reasonable.

Adsorption rate is another important criterion in selecting a sorbent. To be applicable for pressure swing adsorption, the sorption rate needs to be fast to reduce the overall cycle time. FIG. 8 indicates that the weight increases rapidly in the first 2 minutes. The differential weight change indicates significant sorption in less than 1 min. Concerning the effect of temperature, we note that the sorption capacity decreases as temperature increases. But the sorption rate is slightly faster at higher temperature which is typical behavior for a chemical reaction. FIG. 9 shows sorption rate at different temperatures.

Compared, with the sorption rate of commercially-available low temperature PSA sorbents, like activated carbon and zeolites, the sorption rate of our new sorbent is slower. That is because these sorbents capture CO₂ purely based on weak physical interaction. In those cases, the limiting step is mass transfer. However, in our case, the sorption mechanism is based on a surface chemical reaction. It is reasonable to observe a relatively slower sorption rate.

It should be noted that it is a common problem for high temperature sorbents to have slow sorption kinetics, because the sorption is based on chemical reaction, surface or bulk, rather than a weak physical interaction with lower energy barrier. Sorbents like calcium oxide and lithium-based materials capture CO₂ based on bulk reaction. The sorption kinetics can only be improved by increasing the working temperature or by doping which improves the bulk phase mass transfer. But the drawback for this sorption mode is bulk reaction normally leads to a change of crystal structure of sorbent. The sorbent needs a higher temperature to be regenerated, which always results in a decreasing working capacity. The material disclosed here captures CO₂ based on a surface reaction. What we want to stress here is, a sorbent with high surface area, high surface biding site density which captures CO₂ based on a weakly-exothermic surface reaction would reasonably be the better candidate for the PSA process in our temperature of interest (200-300° C.).

To compare our sorbent with the well-studied HTIs discussed above, a reversibility and kinetics comparison was performed in a TGA at 200° C. and 1 atm CO₂. As shown in FIG. 10, all materials show a large capacity in the first cycle, but the capacity of HTIs dramatically decrease after the first cycle, indicating most of the surface reaction is irreversible at this temperature. The capacity for HTIs keeps decreasing in the 10-cycle tests, while the MgO/C sorbent maintains a stable and larger reversible capacity. The sorption rate for these three samples was also compared. As shown in FIG. 11, the MgO/C bas a much faster sorption rate compared with HTIs at 200° C. These two comparisons indicate MgO/C is a better candidate for warm CO₂ capture in the temperature range of interest. MgO/C provides advantages over HTIs in both regenerable capacity and sorption rate.

The superscript numbers refer to the list of references included herewith, the contents of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.

The sorbent disclosed herein has been rigorously analyzed in “Analysis of absorbent-based warm CO2 capture technology for integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants,” Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., the contents of which are incorporated by reference.

It is also recognized that a sorbent within the scope of this invention may begin with a magnesium compound other than MgO such as Mg(OH)₂ or MgCO₃ that will convert to MgO during operation thus falling within the scope of the appended claims.

It is recognized that modifications and variations of the invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, and it is intended that all such modifications and variations be included within the scope of the appended claims.

REFERENCES

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1. Sorbent for reversible warm CO₂ capture comprising a high surface area support material impregnated with MgO, wherein the MgO constitutes at least 5% by weight of the sorbent.
 2. The sorbent of claim 1, wherein a soluble magnesium salt is used as a precursor of the MgO.
 3. The sorbent of claim 1 made using an impregnation method.
 4. The sorbent of claim 1 wherein the high surface area support material is activated carbon.
 5. The sorbent of claim 2 wherein the soluble magnesium salt is magnesium nitrate.
 6. The sorbent of claim 3 wherein the impregnation method is an incipient wetness technique.
 7. The sorbent of claim 1 wherein MgO constitutes approximately 15% by weight of the sorbent. 